He is in the dark; it
is cool and mostly pleasant. The moments stretch into minutes that
desperately try to march into hours. He is alone at the moment, clad
in his favorite colors of mourning, and his favorite lighting of the
single thinly curtained window.

He is numb, and his
head swims slightly in a sea of processed, but unfelt memories.

There is a knock on
the door that echoes through the quiet room, the percussion is a
shock to the numb man sitting beside curtained window.

The man gets up from
his seat in no particular rush and opens the door; the girl of his
memories is sitting there. He can remember her face, heartbroken in
public, a mask of tragedy as a last defense to keep it going… the
final appeal to what is human in the man.

The appeal had
failed, and the man had left and left himself with nothing, nothing
that is but the bottle and a swaying ambition towards the grand.

"Won't you come
in?" He says to the girl.

She takes her step
over the threshold, her toes daintily crossing the barrier as if
forces would rise up to oppose her.

"I was just
thinking of you. What brings you here?" The man continues as he
reclaims his seat by the window.

"I was around, and
I figured that I would see how you are doing?" The girl says. Her
voice is soft, perhaps unsure of itself in the booming silence that
fills the room in abundance.

"I'm so glad
that you came, I'm happy that you made it here. I know it is my
fault that things turned out the way that they did, but perhaps you
would take one last dance with me?" The man appeals to the girl.

"You had me once,
but you gave me up." The girl says to the man.

"You held me so
tight that I thought I would suffocate. I realize that I don't have
anyone to hold me anymore though." The man says as a rebuttal.

The girl who is
attired completely in white distorts in view momentarily, her image
becoming haze in the gloom of the room. When she becomes strikingly
real again her dress is gray. She is soiled in the stains of grief
and failed innocence, the type that comes from forever being a
falsity.

"I was always so
quick tempered; I think I've learned a bit though." The man says.

The music starts, a
slow waltz filled with as much passion as technique. A melody with a
wonderful slow tempo that invites the feet to move to it, the man
stands up and invites the girl into his arms.

"I am in no mood
to slow dance; I can now dance fast or slow with someone else now.
You always wanted to dance slow, lamenting the griefs real and
imagined placed on to you by this world." The girl steps back from
the man. As he once distanced himself from her, she now distances
herself from him; placing a chasm where romance once stood.

The slow waltz, the
same old song of the always stops playing, it is replaced by that of
a violin slow and soulful, but still indulgently dirge like.

"If you do not
want a last dance, then what can I offer you?" The man says, his
face the over worn expression of explicit tragedy.

A pause in the
dialogue, one of discomfort and no small amount of pain, the girl
finally works the underused muscles of her jaw to form words to cut
the lull.

"I came for my
self image back; I would also like my ideas back. You emptied me out
and filled me up with so much of you it is interfering with my life
now." The girl says.

The violin
intensifies, the music is no longer bow to horse hide, but being
played by a razor on the tendons of the man's arm. His arm is held
parallel to the floor; his tendons are rising from his wrist in a
delicate yet bloody tuning and tautness. The razor runs its course
over them bringing forth the sweetest melody.

"Of course girl,
they are all in the drawer in the back of my neck. You can have them
back the keep crawling into my own head from which I have tried to
banish them." The man says.

The girl approaches
the man and turns him around removing the drawer from the back of his
neck, in it nestled safely is her self images and nuances and
perceptions. She takes them from the drawer and sets them in the
breast pocket of her dress.

This action reminds
the author who is perceiving it of a day on the beach, and the warm
sunlight that he had felt on his bare shoulders. The ocean was so
blue and cool, and deep, deep, deep. I still visit that ocean in my
dreams, sometimes it is a pool filled up with the smiling concepts of
affection.

After the girl takes
her possessions back she leaves the room, leaving the man's drawer
empty to be filled back up by something eventually. An invisible tie
of warmth between the two exceedingly delicate individuals is
severed, the music stops, the man is left alone to his
contemplations.

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